Burrito

The burrito, which means “little donkey” (burro), is a large flour tortilla rolled around a filling such as beans, meat, or cheese, along with vegetables and salsa. David Thomsen and Derek Wilson, authors of ¡Burritos! (1998), believe that the modern burrito originated “in the dusty borderlands between Tucson and Los Angeles.” The first located mention of burritos in America, however, appeared in Erna Fergusson’s Mexican Cookbook, published in 1934 (Fergusson’s recipes were from New Mexico). Wherever they may have been invented, burritos were a specialty of Los Angeles’s famed El Cholo Spanish Café in the 1930s, and they became a mainstay elsewhere in the Southwest by the 1950s. In the 1960s burritos were popular nationwide, and in the 1970s fast food chains such as Taco Bell, El Pollo Loco, and Chipotle featured them. Ready-made burritos, to be reheated in the store’s microwave, were sold in 7-Eleven convenience stores. The McDonald’s Breakfast Burrito—sausage and eggs wrapped up in a tortilla—transformed the burrito into a breakfast food. Several fast food chains, such as Burritoville and the Green Burrito, have named themselves after their flagship product.